So... This is the "improved encounter design"?

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Originally Posted by Xelanar

I find the encounters to be very much improved.
I have yet to do M4S but the other three are awesome.
Easy to understand, some of the mechanics require to actually pay attention, and an amount of downtime I can live with.

I was growing tired of mechanics that superficially look complex because of 4834854 debuffs being slapped on everyone, but once you get used to them it's only 2-3 easily recognizable patterns.
Honey B. is my favorite encounter design-wise. And I'm not only saying that because she forces me to.

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the tier is cool, but there is nothing really innovative in it's design, except for alarm pheromones (m2s)

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Originally Posted by CaedemSanguis

the tier is cool, but there is nothing really innovative in it's design, except for alarm pheromones (m2s)

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exactly, right? Mechanics are mostly recycled, but fights do feel better. At least to me they do, even after clearing them multiple times on different characters. Maybe it's the tiny memory games they added, or the way you need to pay attention to things other than your debuffs. It's honestly hard for me to pinpoint exact reasons. All I know is that I'm having more fun than I had in Eden or Pandaemonium while learning or once reclear routine kicks in.

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Originally Posted by CaedemSanguis

the tier is cool, but there is nothing really innovative in it's design, except for alarm pheromones (m2s)

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Ironically, so far from what I experienced of half of the tier, Alarm Pheromones is the most exciting mechanic they added exactly because it allows some sort of free form. I know people go for this "Mario Kart" strat for that part (th is that name...), but as a ranged unit I feel much more safe by doing the mech on my own instead of following the group.

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Originally Posted by Rekh

This level of difficulty matches heavensward and stormblood.

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I remember they mentioned pre-Stormblood as their goal for actual creativity, but with it being less annoying. Because the "different" mechanics in Heavensward were often just an annoyance. I do feel they have achieved this.

The compromise they made is they are now alright with you having to tomahawk spam if you can't be in melee range, which they were trying to avoid completely in Endwalker with the giant hitboxes.

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FFXIV's long term issue's the lack of punishment

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They do give vuln stacks so that subsequent mistakes can build up to being a problem. That combined with needing to watch your surroundings can make them more threatening. However, if they just kill you on the first mistake, then people say healers have no role or that there are body checks.

I do personally prefer mechanics to just kill, but that is often left to content with lots of rezzers such as hunts.

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Combine that with no rng

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Well there is specific RNG within the mechanics or specific patterns chosen at random, but the entire mechanic order being random from start to finish is likely something they will never do and I think if someone is expecting this they'll be disappointed. The closest I think we got to that was in SoS Extreme and ARR hunts where the entire array of casts is chosen at random.

It has actually a improved encounter design, compare it with the last expansion and you see it, one of the most complains was the hitbox which had the size as the moon, now melees have to fight a bit again for full uptime, and dont forget its the first tier and with picto and the buffs so many dds had the tier was just a bit underwhelming, square already said they know it and it wont happen with the next tier

Man, I wonder if the next tier will have fights that take place on a flat circular or square arena, maybe they will even feel daring and make it rectangular.

Jokes aside, I think for regular content like dungeons and story trials, the pace of the fights is drastically improved from Endwalker, where it felt like there were long periods where the boss does absolutely nothing and just waits for death until the remember "oh yeah, mechanics" and teleports to perform it. In Dawntrail, there is less time where the boss just sits there and does nothing, which is nice, the mechanics themselves also have a bit more teeth to em, often resolving much quicker and being a bit more punishing, which is a nice change from EW as a whole.

I don't Savage raid anymore, so I will refrain from making comments about that, but in general, the first tier is always the easiest, usually so new/returning players get a feel for any job changes, 2nd and 3rd tiers are usually given a bit more oomph.

Beyond savage, I like that valigarmanda was a comparatively more engaging fight for healers for once. At least when everyone was running around in 690 gear.

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Originally Posted by Teno

Beyond savage, I like that valigarmanda was a comparatively more engaging fight for healers for once. At least when everyone was running around in 690 gear.

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I agree. I'm actually perfectly fine with EX keeping the approach they have now, being more standard for a possible High End introduction to new players. Currently I personally feel they have a similar level of difficulty than of Savage, but the difference is that they have less mechanics to solve.

I felt like on normal they took so long it made me not want to do them again. Plus, the loot structure sucks. I don't want to do them multiple times and collect multiple trinkets to get the gear. I just didn't find the experience fun. The fights were fine. The mechanics made sense. It just took way too long to kill. And given the groups failed multiple times, it took even longer. It was something I wasn't going to do twice.

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Originally Posted by Ardeth

I felt like on normal they took so long it made me not want to do them again.

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They get faster with gear. Plus, the people who took ages were probably still learning mechanics and will be better at them now. The timeframe now is the same as any previous raids we've had, but eventually it will be as quick as P1-P4 by the end of the expansion.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Edit: Just a disclaimer since this is not in the thread title, but this is about Savage fights in case it's not clear

I'm a Party Finder raider (for logistic reasons), and as I'm slowly going through the new Arcadion fights, almost done with M2S clear, I can't help but feel a bit... disappointed?

Not to the fights themselves! They are well made, I don't take that away, but they are literally more of their 'safe formula' of symmetrical cleaves, mirrored, clockspot based mechanics, or events that are either X > Y or Y > X. Many elements are just things we already know but slightly dressed up. We still need 4 melees and 4 ranged units to resolve mechanics perfectly.

I did take a peek on M3S and M4S guides and it didn't really change what I think either. As I cleared this week's worth of M1S I kept thinking to myself how interesting would be if the Black Cat's clones were actual priority adds to micromanage instead of just animations?

The reason why I feel disappointed is because, based on the key notes, I thought we'd see an actual shake up on that formula, maybe taking more risks more out-of-the-box elements, or even paving the way for new types of job utilities to debut in the future.

I wonder if I got that feel totally wrong or delusional from the Fanfest? But if not, based on the extent of what we got, I kinda fear for the "job identity focus" in 8.0.

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M2S is the least FF14 feeling fight we've had even. In fact it feels like it's straight out of WoW. What game are you playing?

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Originally Posted by Tizzy_Tormentor

Man, I wonder if the next tier will have fights that take place on a flat circular or square arena, maybe they will even feel daring and make it rectangular.

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You know that's actually a cool sounding idea - Have multi-level arenas with different mechanics for each level, sort of like one of the Omega raids back in SB.

Yeah, Yoshida mentioned he more or less gave the battle devs the greenlight to look into new/interesting mechanics... BUT theyll likely stick with the broad already known stuff when it comes to general/everyday content just to play it safe. If we're to see any shake up it'll more likely come in the more "Optional" kinds of content so Ults and prolly Field Operations.

To be fair I don't mind the trickle-down of mechanics, I've seen a couple of times mechanics that were only present in raids and upwards have shown up in dungeons a couple of expansions down the line. If they did it more often it would help to integrate the casual and raiding communities as raiders would readily recognise and be able to explain things showing up in normal stuff.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

You know that's actually a cool sounding idea - Have multi-level arenas with different mechanics for each level, sort of like one of the Omega raids back in SB.

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To chime in on this, I really liked the Ultima, I think, was its name from Orbonne. The one where you start in a big rectangular area that then becomes a maze and then a small flat cicle and then back to the open area. I like fights like that.

But that's kinda towing the line that Stormblood had good content, which to me at least it did.

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Originally Posted by TheRealQuah

M2S is the least FF14 feeling fight we've had even. In fact it feels like it's straight out of WoW. What game are you playing?

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Idk... The mechanics that are actually really interesting and refreshing to me is Alarm Pheromones 1 and the Beat 1's random heart evasion (which also feels like stuff we had in Barbariccia). The rest of the mechanics are all stuff we know. Circle or Line aoE, then repeat the opposite one, 2 patterns of honey blobs aoes, stack with partner or spread, group movement mechanic around boss to lay down puddles, a tether bait similar to the last mech on Rubicante, etc...

I think it's a very well made fight and I do enjoy... But not the expectation of something very unique that I had based on the Keynotes.

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Originally Posted by Ardeth

To chime in on this, I really liked the Ultima, I think, was its name from Orbonne. The one where you start in a big rectangular area that then becomes a maze and then a small flat cicle and then back to the open area. I like fights like that.

But that's kinda towing the line that Stormblood had good content, which to me at least it did.

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Stormblood definitely had better content than EW, I still think in terms of dungeon enemies and bosses it was a step down from what came before but yeah, it was still more than just dodging aoes which is good for all that bar is low.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

Stormblood definitely had better content than EW, I still think in terms of dungeon enemies and bosses it was a step down from what came before but yeah, it was still more than just dodging aoes which is good for all that bar is low.

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Eureka by itself puts Stormblood patch content in A tier list. I think it's generally considered a weak baseline expansion, but great patch content, story included. Also needless to say that Heavens on High was more refreshing after PotD than Eureka Orthos being HoH's successor.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Idk... The mechanics that are actually really interesting and refreshing to me is Alarm Pheromones 1 and the Beat 1's random heart evasion (which also feels like stuff we had in Barbariccia). The rest of the mechanics are all stuff we know. Circle or Line aoE, then repeat the opposite one, 2 patterns of honey blobs aoes, stack with partner or spread, group movement mechanic around boss to lay down puddles, a tether bait similar to the last mech on Rubicante, etc...

I think it's a very well made fight and I do enjoy... But not the expectation of something very unique that I had based on the Keynotes.

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Funnily enough, Alarm Pheromones is the one mechanic I keep seeing tons of complaints about specifically because it's so different/more reactive. I love that mechanic as well.

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Originally Posted by angienessyo

Funnily enough, Alarm Pheromones is the one mechanic I keep seeing tons of complaints about specifically because it's so different/more reactive. I love that mechanic as well.

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those kind of mechanics are "wow style" mechanics (look out and adjust)

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Did you read the whole post? I'm not criticizing the fights for what they are (like I said, they are good), but the directions they could've had based on expectations of what they show pre-expansion.

And why I made this post even though I don't think the fights themselves are bad? Because their formula, good or not, is getting old for me personally.

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When u take a moment of op posting this and realize 21 ppl upvoted the person who said this to op...its no wonder our game in such an awkard part....ppl cant read.... OwO

Changes are not satisfying enough..

Difficulty is good but fights are repetitive and boring

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Originally Posted by CaedemSanguis

those kind of mechanics are "wow style" mechanics (look out and adjust)

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Not saying the grass is greener there because I quit around BfA, so Idk how WoW is nowadays, but I personally think that those mechanics are more interesting because they encourage thinking on the go and reward good improvisation skills, as opposed to the very cemented way that the usual mechanics are solved.

Puzzle like mechanics also have such a short shelf life, because once solved all that matters is remembering what goes where, and then after a few rounds, it becomes autopilot because there's usually just a few set patterns that stuff can go (many times just 2 patterns tbh)... ln a reclear scope, it gets either stale or annoying (in a PF setting) when somebody else fails repeatedly on stuff they shouldn't.

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Originally Posted by Zakuyia

When u take a moment of op posting this and realize 21 ppl upvoted the person who said this to op...its no wonder our game in such an awkard part....ppl cant read.... OwO

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excuse me, 22.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Puzzle like mechanics also have such a short shelf life, because once solved all that matters is remembering what goes where, and then after a few rounds, it becomes autopilot because there's usually just a few set patterns that stuff can go (many times just 2 patterns tbh)... ln a reclear scope, it gets either stale or annoying (in a PF setting) when somebody else fails repeatedly on stuff they shouldn't.

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And that is what I find least satisfying about FFXIV encounters. :(

I'm having fun

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Not saying the grass is greener there because I quit around BfA, so Idk how WoW is nowadays, but I personally think that those mechanics are more interesting because they encourage thinking on the go and reward good improvisation skills, as opposed to the very cemented way that the usual mechanics are solved.

Puzzle like mechanics also have such a short shelf life, because once solved all that matters is remembering what goes where, and then after a few rounds, it becomes autopilot because there's usually just a few set patterns that stuff can go (many times just 2 patterns tbh)... ln a reclear scope, it gets either stale or annoying (in a PF setting) when somebody else fails repeatedly on stuff they shouldn't.

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I don't like FF Encounters for this reason as well because it feels more like rehearsing for a dance or playing DDR than actually using my brain and think what tool to use for it on the fly. But I guess that M2S first Beats shows that perhaps there is room for an in between, with some amount of chaos, within the current system.

But that would be asking them to make the game into a whole different game and seriously review how difficulty is weighted on every facet of the game and how every mechanic is actually designed, because solving current mechanics without any kind of "trick" to do them within 5s of reaction would just not work at all.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I don't like FF Encounters for this reason as well because it feels more like rehearsing for a dance or playing DDR than actually using my brain and think what tool to use for it on the fly. But I guess that M2S first Beats shows that perhaps there is room for an in between, with some amount of chaos, within the current system.

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Honestly, hitting a balance like you suggests is like a very good goal if you'd ask me. M2S, imagine if the beats were all like that, but the "not beats" phases were more formulaic, you'd get a good balance between the two of them. I wouldn't even mind if some particular fights would lean more into one aspect than the other, as long as the big picture is balanced.

I don't necessarily think it's making a whole different game, is just taking what they already have and reaching a better harmony between aspects "It's a test of your muscle memory" versus "a test of your wits".

They've also done it with Alert Pheromones (the first one) just after the 1st Beats, and see how controversial this has proven already. Every melee on earth hated that apparently. Too randomly obnoxious they said. Couldn't keep their GCD rolling perfectly and preferred greeding the mechanic than dodging.

I find myself unimpressed by the savage fights on the whole after doing normal.

2 and 3 especially felt like there was a lot more dynamic movement that couldn't be planned in normal to maintain uptime, while savage m2 only retains alarm pheromones 1 and none of the random ground targeted actions, and m3 has almost no chasing the boss for uptime, no bomb layout differences and no baited ground AoEs.

I also find myself cynically thinking this is because they thought players wouldn't be able to deal with these more random mechanics without raising a big stink about it as we already see from alarm pheromone complaints. There seems to be a mentality among players that we should all be able to always maintain perfect uptime and not have to measure any opportunity costs to do so, and the devs kept designing fights in this way because it can feel bad for players otherwise, like they've been cheated or something.

It's going to take time for players to change on this because we're so used to living in our perfectly mapped encounter timelines to the point that job design has followed suit with things like 0 damage gap closers, gap closer charge accumulation, no-cost sprint, free healing almost everywhere and almost 100% effective knockback immunity.

But at least, this tier, boss hitboxes are mostly smaller, the final fight isn't absolutely riddled with 'puzzle' mechanics that are only fun to solve but not to play, and alarm pheromones at least exists in Savage. M2s and M4s pace is a little bit faster than what we often have so we're not just whacking a boss doing nothing for 50+ seconds (thanks, Brute Bomber). We're on a more fun trajectory, I think. I just hope they don't stop here because it's not quite enough as it is.

I do think it's reasonable to expect melee to be able to maintain 90% or more uptime but in savage it shouldn't necessarily be easy to do or even obvious where to position to do so. That should be part of the job difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

I do think it's reasonable to expect melee to be able to maintain 90% or more uptime but in savage it shouldn't necessarily be easy to do or even obvious where to position to do so. That should be part of the job difficulty.

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So long as the same is pretty consistently true for casters' casting and whatever unique role-thematic difficulty physical ranged bring to the table, I'm all for this.

*I'm assuming here that you mean "melee uptime" or "effective uptime" (where our fallback ranged attacks contribute only proportionate to their damage relative to what could be done from melee).

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

I do think it's reasonable to expect melee to be able to maintain 90% or more uptime but in savage it shouldn't necessarily be easy to do or even obvious where to position to do so. That should be part of the job difficulty.

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I wonder how that situation would change if they kept the melee uptime as it is today, but transfered a big portion of their melee combo potencies to the successful positional hits. This way you're still on the boss, but now there's this layer of difficulty that is in fact a movement constraint too.

Both of those seem fairly reasonable to me as a mostly heal/ranged player who mostly dabbles in NIN from time to time. There is obviously the slidecasting element to that so I'm not entirely sure how caster uptime could be constrained but equally I'm not that creative. I suppose it would be reasonable to have some add phase or something where ranged (preferably casters) have to do something to facilitate melee uptime? Mostly the having ranged/casters doing something since I still prefer melee uptime being tied to the melee player's skill rather than dependant on someone else (tank not withstanding since positioning should be their job) doing their job properly. I'm sure people better at melee and the game in general than me will have better ideas.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

There is obviously the slidecasting element to that so I'm not entirely sure how caster uptime could be constrained

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A small note that may be of use:

Everyone has access to 100% uptime, technically, regardless of content, due to fall-back options. It's effective uptime, the portion of maximum striking dummy DPS or the available positioning required for that, that differs with context.

Some variance in the term effective uptime:

• Can be used to describe actual portion of damage produced, in which case it's basically just %yield.
• Can be used to describe just one's potential for output rather than actual output, including positional access.
• Can be used to describe only what requires melee range / standing time, rather than positionals or anything outside of one's control beyond those two concerns (interested more in basic potential than real output).

That makes sense. I think we're in agreement.

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Originally Posted by Post

I find myself unimpressed by the savage fights on the whole after doing normal.

2 and 3 especially felt like there was a lot more dynamic movement that couldn't be planned in normal to maintain uptime, while savage m2 only retains alarm pheromones 1 and none of the random ground targeted actions, and m3 has almost no chasing the boss for uptime, no bomb layout differences and no baited ground AoEs.

I also find myself cynically thinking this is because they thought players wouldn't be able to deal with these more random mechanics without raising a big stink about it as we already see from alarm pheromone complaints. There seems to be a mentality among players that we should all be able to always maintain perfect uptime and not have to measure any opportunity costs to do so, and the devs kept designing fights in this way because it can feel bad for players otherwise, like they've been cheated or something.

It's going to take time for players to change on this because we're so used to living in our perfectly mapped encounter timelines to the point that job design has followed suit with things like 0 damage gap closers, gap closer charge accumulation, no-cost sprint, free healing almost everywhere and almost 100% effective knockback immunity.

But at least, this tier, boss hitboxes are mostly smaller, the final fight isn't absolutely riddled with 'puzzle' mechanics that are only fun to solve but not to play, and alarm pheromones at least exists in Savage. M2s and M4s pace is a little bit faster than what we often have so we're not just whacking a boss doing nothing for 50+ seconds (thanks, Brute Bomber). We're on a more fun trajectory, I think. I just hope they don't stop here because it's not quite enough as it is.

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Because that's how the game at higher level is designed to be all about rehearsing a DDR script.
Because that's why they keep removing procs and rng on jobs all the time to get closer and closer to an unchanging, unvariable script you have to do again and again and again when progging. And then when weekly reclearing.
Because they'd rather have each encounter fully mapped on an excel sheet for optimization, even if you could technically just run an elaborate macro that would just do the rotation for you (it's already been done on SMN and DRG back in Apshodelos).
Because the player skills that are put under the spotlight those days are exclusively about muscle memory and pattern memorization, and not adjustment, agency and choice on the spot.

And let's be honest, if they made everything truly random (not just the role agnostic mechanics of recent ultimates, that are already run with bots and third party everywhere because that's like playing speed chess against a grandmaster), they'd need to tone down the fight complexity immensely much the same way it used to be less complicated back when job kits and the battle system overall had more meat to it and was more demanding. Today everything is fueled into encounters, so the rest has to accommodate for this as a result. I'm not a WoW player but from what I've seen even mythic mechanics are a lot less intricate and impressive mechanically and their class rotations are basic in comparison (but have/had a lot of rng/apm), but they'll mess you up hard because everything is randomized to the bone.

Ehh, spec optimizations lack the easily conveyable rigid patterns of XIVs and APLs are generally unconditional and therefore oversimplified and so WoW specs will generally appear less complex, but as soon as one gets into adaptive and preemptive management, the complexity for fully optimization easily and greatly exceeds XIV's for most jobs/specs. And many of the mechanics are still plenty complex, just not necessarily from a DDR perspective.

I did think this tier was a little on the easy side but it was also miles ahead of anything from Endwalker in terms of fun so I'll take it. 8/10 from me. Happy with it.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Ehh, spec optimizations lack the easily conveyable rigid patterns of XIVs and APLs are generally unconditional and therefore oversimplified and so WoW specs will generally appear less complex, but as soon as one gets into adaptive and preemptive management, the complexity for fully optimization easily and greatly exceeds XIV's for most jobs/specs. And many of the mechanics are still plenty complex, just not necessarily from a DDR perspective.

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Sometimes outside of the crazy apm, not gonna lie, I feel that I have more of a wow player profile in spite of being absolutely unwilling to get into it.